Vance only partly right on the all-time best striker question

For most, seeing your team win, surely?

Witnessing a wonderful solo goal is satisfying too, as is seeing outrageous balls skills coming off – instead of the ridicule for a player who has dreamt he was good enough to take a high ball on his thigh, and to then swivel and hit a 30-yard pearler high into the top corner, but who is clearly not up to it and falls flat on his face after the ball smacks him squarely in the unmentionables.

But is it the more subtle, largely hidden truth of why football is so popular? It enables us, the observer, to make instant judgements on player performance, claim so-and-so is better than so-and-so, just because of something we have seen that nobody else or few others have.

Football, let's face it, is great for telling your mate, 'he's great, he's rubbish and I know better than you'.

It's a game that allows for sweeping statements and this week the Guernsey FC boss, Tony Vance, who is rather qualified having been a better player than most in the long history of island football, said Ross Allen was Guernsey's greatest ever striker.

But is he?

Just because the stats – 199 GFC goals in 157 starts – point to that, it does not necessarily mean he is.

And why?

Because, simply, we will never quite know, just suspect we do.

Because of what we are seeing now, at this time. Vance suspects his No. 10 is the best ever.

But is the current GFC hero better than, say, Ross's dad, Craig?

Is he better than Kevin Le Tissier, Ray Blondel, John Loveridge, Micky Brassel, Jim Eker or Harold Dorey, great Guernsey goal-scorers all?

Were you asking the same question in 1950, the old boys who were then saying football is not what it was before the Occupation, would no doubt claim Dorey, the great Northerner of the late 20s and early 30s, was our best ever.

Before heading off to a new life in Jersey, Dorey smacked home 131 goals in 79 club games and in Murattis he netted 14 goals in a dozen appearances.

I never saw Dorey and I guess there are very few alive that did, but clearly he was outstanding for his time when club football was hiuge across the Channel Islands.

The careers of Brassel and Eker were also before my time, but my generation have been privileged to see the Loveridges, Blondels, Le Tissiers and Allens, and in their own ways these four all had elements of their game which made them better than any rival.

Ask any old Saints fan and they will argue that Loveridge was the best No. 9 and he certainly won many a big game.

Consider his Upton record.

When Saints embarked on their run for nine Priaulx titles in a row, the electric, loose-limbed No. 9 who was also very able in the air, scored two in the 4-1 win over Oaklands, followed it up with two more the next April against Georgetown and scored in a further three Uptons, including two more braces.

That's impact.

His Muratti record was highly handy too: 13 goals in 16 games.

Ray Blondel's surgical finishing was no less impressive, but injuries restricted the middle Blondel brother to just a few remarkable free-scoring seasons.

He, too, delivered on the Upton stage and nobody who was at Springfield on Liberation Day 1974, will ever forget his brilliant double to sink the home side 2-1.

At his best he was supremely deadly, scoring a remarkable 50 club goals in 25 games in the 73-74 season.

Alas, the best of Craig Allen was reserved for American audiences, but having given notice of his scoring prowess with five on debut against Alderney when still a junior, he disappeared from our view for more than a decade before returning as a seasoned campaigner 13 years later and scoring seven in one Muratti semi demolition job on the Ridunians. But Craig was not simply a striker, he was a more rounded, versatile attacker, one that allowed others to play.

You can include in that 'others' list Kevin Le Tissier who was, emphatically, the most talented of the lot, yet never fully fulfilled his talent in the manner the Allens did either side of the Atlantic.

The young 'KLT' was something to behold and while North and latterly Bels benefitted much from his presence, three years as a Vale Rec man in the early 80s sets him apart for me.

In terms of pure talent he was as good as his brother Matt, who did rather well along the south coast somewhere.

Priaulx League defences were largely experienced and non-porous in that time, but the 17-year-old Le Tissier helped himself to 26 goals in 25 games for Rec in his final year as a junior, and the next winter rattled in 46 from 30 games.

It was a staggering introduction to senior football.

Yet in assessing his whole career you cannot help but come to the conclusion that, as brilliant as he was, he left much of that potential untapped.

He had the ability to put himself out of sight in terms of career goals and lasting reputation.

I have no doubt Ross Allen will end his career with stats that set him apart from any striker for a century, so therefore Vance is right – he is the best.

But if you ask me is his very best as good as his father Craig and Kevin Le Tissier at their peaks, I will conclude not. Because on the home stage 'KLT' in the early 1980s was something else and a very, very special player.

As for Craig, we were denied sight of it.

STAT ATTACK...

• Harold Dorey (North): 131 goals in 79 games pre-war.

• Jim Eker: 229 goals in 206 games for (largely) North.

• Ray Blondel (Vale Rec): 220 in 273 games.

• Les Collins (largely Bels): 315 goals in 463 games, inc. 21 club hat-tricks.

• Micky Brassel (Vale Rec and Tics): 144 goals in 166.

• John Loveridge (largely St Martin’s): 303 in 369.